


Thursday Girl

by lixabiz



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, soup kitchen au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 17:04:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4487691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lixabiz/pseuds/lixabiz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompted by a Tumblr Anon, who wanted a fic where Rose volunteers at a soup kitchen and Ten is mistaken for a homeless man after he visits the kitchen to check on his friend, Wilf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thursday Girl

She’s Thursday Girl.

Every thursday, Wilf says later on, she volunteers at the soup kitchen. Unfailingly so, as regular as clockwork, and a fair cook besides. He’s been in his share of soup kitchens over the years, and her soup is top-notch.

John sees her for the first time on a cold January night while checking on Wilf, making sure the old man isn’t wandering about the streets and freezing to death. He’s checked all of Wilf’s regular haunts to no avail, until he remembers this particular kitchen is a favoured location.

As far as he can tell, the only person working is a girl behind the counter, ladling out hot bowls to the queue that rapidly grew lengthy due to the inclement weather. Out of politeness, he joins the queue, waiting to get to the front of the line to ask the girl if Wilf has been by at all that evening.

She looks him over when he gets there, a flicker of surprise in her big brown eyes. It quickly turns into warm sympathy, and she sets a bowl in front of him, saying simply, “Here you go.”

He opens his mouth to explain, no, he’s not homeless, he doesn’t need soup, but finds himself suddenly sneezing. 

“The soup will warm you up,” she says kindly, and suddenly he’s being shuffled forward, out of the way, nose running with a steaming bowl in both hands. 

That’s when he catches sight of Wilf, coming through the doors of the kitchen and removing his knit cap from his head. He looks, to John’s chagrin, much thinner than he had the last time they’d seen each other.

John gives Wilf the soup, leading him to a table and sitting down next to him, watching as he eats. Wilf is hungry, hollow cheeks slurping at the food. He doesn’t question John’s presence and seems to understand that John is worried about him. He gets quite chatty, actually, almost as if to say, _I’m alright, no need to worry._

When John looks up again at the counter, the person ladling out soup bowls is a middle-aged bloke, and Thursday Girl as she becomes known to him is nowhere to be seen.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s sort of a coincidence that two weeks later, on another Thursday, he goes back to the soup kitchen to make sure that Wilf isn’t starving to death wearing the same suit he’d worn the last time.

Exactly year ago (on a Sunday, if he isn’t mistaken), Wilf was rushed into the A&E by paramedics who had found him collapsed on a street corner. John had been the attending physician at the time, working the night shift. Homeless, feverish, crying out names of lost ones. Wilf dredges up memories for John, painful ones, but he’s a doctor, and he does what he can to help. Somewhere along the line, an unlikely friendship develops.

It’s an important Thursday. It’s the anniversary of the day Wilf lost his family. It’s the worst day of the year. John’s scared.

Thursday Girl’s shift is over by the time he arrives at the soup kitchen, later than he’d hoped due to an emergency. She’s taking off her apron and putting on her coat when he bursts in.

“Hey,” she says, approaching him cautiously, putting a hand on his sleeve. There’s a stain on his suit  where an aggressive, drugged patient threw an IV bag at him. It’s still wet and sticky, and he’s panting, out of breath. “Hey, it’s okay. Calm down. Breathe.”

“John?”

It’s Wilf’s voice. He turns to see the older man standing behind him. He looks miserable.

John walks over to him and puts him arm around Wilf. There’s no struggle.

The thing you need the most in the whole wide world, John thinks, is a hand to hold. In the darkness, in the chaos of living and dying and breathing, it’s important to know: you are not alone.

Wilf is not alone. John is not alone.

Thursday Girl is gone again.

 

* * *

 

 

He begins to measure the days. It’s a trickle of work, patients, long shifts, and a silent flat at the end of each rotation. There’s no real pattern or sustainable rhythm to his schedule… life, after all, is unexpected, and both happiness and devastation can occur at the drop of a pin.

But he does go to the soup kitchen every Thursday, to see Wilf, and he’s sort of figured out the optimal time frame, to arrive before Thursday Girl finishes her shift, but not early enough that she’d notice he doesn’t get into the queue for a meal.

(Guiltily, he wears the same suit, but that’s just to preserve… continuity, he tells himself. It’s not lying. He doesn’t even talk to her, except to say ‘Goodnight’ when she’s got her coat on and nods at him, smiling, before she walks out the door.)

He wonders who Thursday Girl is when it’s not Thursday. He wonders about it more and more frequently.

 

* * *

 

 

The pattern shifts, as it inevitably does. There are no constants anywhere else, after all. Why should this be any different?

Wilf doesn’t show. It’s Thursday, and he doesn’t show, and John feels… bereft. After an hour of waiting, he decides to leave.

He’s halfway down the street when footsteps ring out behind him, and a hand tugs on his arm.

It’s Thursday Girl, in her coat, breath frosting in the air. She’s chased after him. To say he’s startled is an understatement.

“Hey,” she says, panting slightly, “You alright?”

He doesn’t know what to say. “What?”

She looks at him, frowning. “You sat by yourself.”

“Yeah,” is all he manages.

“You look… kinda funny.” A brief gesture at his face, and another frown. He’s not sure if this is offensive. “I mean, you seem… a bit…”

“What?” he croaks. He’s being rude, he knows he is. Thursday Girl falters, but she persists, clearly used to getting the cold shoulder from people she’s done her best to help. He admires that.

“Couldn’t help but notice you didn’t eat anything, either.”

He admires her, in all her glorious dishevelment: blonde pigtails askew under her purple beanie, cheeks flushed, the uncertain air of someone who knows they are about to be either brushed off or bitten for their efforts.

And he knows, he has to tell the truth.

“I’m not homeless.”

Her reaction shocks him. Thursday Girl just… shrugs.

“I didn’t really think you were.”

John gapes at her, and she explains, “Not everyone who comes to a kitchen is homeless. Sometimes people just need a hot meal.”

Everything he’s thought and wondered and wanted to know about Thursday Girl, all of it, it’s in this one sentence. Compassion, kindness, understanding.

“You come to see him, don’t you?” she asks. She means Wilf, obviously.

“He lost his family,” says John.

Thursday Girl’s eyes soften, her mouth parts a little, every inch of her body language radiates tender sympathy. She looks at him, really looks at him, and he feels like she’s staring right into his soul, like every molecule of his body has become transparent, the ragged, bruised center of him visible.

“My name’s Rose,” she says, after a moment. “Rose Tyler.”

“Nice to meet you, Rose,” he says, heart racing. _Thursday Girl_ , she’s still _Thursday Girl_ in his head. But not for long, after this. “I’m John.”

 

* * *

 

Weeks go by.

John starts to volunteer at the soup kitchen. He might as well, frankly, he’s there on a certain day every week. Wilf smiles at him and John is glad to see he’s gained a little weight in his cheeks.

 

* * *

 

The Universe is not very kind, John knows, but there is something that it seems to favour, time and time again: symmetry.

It’s in the barely sprouting leaves budding on the tree above him, in the well kept, perfectly parallel gravel paths that lead from the entrance gates of Kemnal Park Memorial to the polished gravestones before him. Two of them, in fact.

“Wilf told me you’d be here,” says Rose, sitting down beside him on the bench.

It’s windy. She’s wearing a scarf, a woolly pink knitted thing, cozy and pretty and the colour of her cheeks. There’s something cylindrical and blue in her hands. A thermos. She uncaps it, and steam wafts from the bottle. The smell makes John’s insides cramp, but at the same time, it’s soothing, too.

“First time I saw you, in that queue,” she says, “I thought, 'here’s a bloke who needs some soup’. You sneezed something awful. Serves you right for wandering about in that thin little suit.”

He tries to argue that he never touched the food, not a single drop, but his tongue doesn’t want to co-operate.

At last, he says, “It’s Thursday.”

She doesn’t understand, of course she doesn’t.

“You’re right,” he says, trying again. “I could really use some soup.”

Rose holds his hand while he drinks from the thermos, and she doesn’t let go for a very long time.


End file.
